Starting out on mobile can be overwhelming. Where do you start? How do you prepare for your first campaign? These are big questions that we hear every day. This is the first in a series of posts on establishing your presence on the mobile web - before you even start your first advertising campaign.

An essential part of any digital marketing campaign is the post-click experience from advertising. Is your website easy to navigate? Are there any hurdles to conversion that you can remove? These are the same questions that you should consider for your mobile user experience.

We recently conducted a study that examined the mobile post-click experience of some of our largest advertisers. After looking at over 200 diagnostic points to measure ‘mobile readiness,’ including load time, device detection and mobile site optimization, we found that only 21% of Google’s largest advertisers have a website that is optimized for mobile. That’s 79% serving up a less than ideal experience for their mobile customers.

The good news is that it’s not too late to be early on mobile! Get ahead of your competition by creating a fantastic experience for your mobile customers. Start with these 4 tips for designing a great mobile website and check in next week for some real examples of how to test and build a mobile website that works for your business.

Prioritize what’s important. Make it easy for customers on-the-go to call or find directions to your business. Easy navigation combined with relevant and interesting information lead to happy customers and more business.

Take advantage of mobile-specific functionality. Users can interact through touch, sound, sight and location on their mobile device. Create a mobile website with custom content that utilizes these capabilities.

Build for the mobile platform. Focus on easy navigation and remember to develop your website with touch screens in mind. Eliminating any website elements that don’t work or are slow to load on a mobile phone will keep users engaged.

Optimize, optimize, optimize. Be sure to add mobile analytics to your website in order to evaluate and improve performance.